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Differences between the world of RK and the real-life 1400s.
A work in progress - I've got more to add to this, and others are welcome to add to it too. -Wizardblizzard1 To a first approximation, the setting of Renaissance Kingdoms is that of real-life 15th century Europe. If you want to read up more about that, there are plenty of better places to do it than here, so this page won't go into that. But there are points where RK seriously diverges from real-life history. This guide aims to sum up which they are, so you know what kind of society your character is dealing with. The first rule is that almost everything varies depending on who's telling the story. If this makes you nervous about saying anything about RK society in a thread in case it's not how the thread-starter thinks it is, don't be. It's all pretty rough and ready. If it wasn't, none of us would ever get anywhere. Just try to avoid contradicting something that's been said in that thread (e.g. if the local URAC priest's already been seen to be on visiting terms with the Priestess of the Grove, they can't be persecuting your character for following the Old Ways, and vice versa), and you should be fine. It's all made up as we go along. Men and women Women in Renaissance Kingdoms's Europe have more or less equal status to men. They can be knights, priests, soldiers or sailors, and not a few wear breeches. Some adopt more traditional (relative to the real world) female roles, but that's a matter of choice. That's not to say that there were no powerful women in the 1400s in the real world. Many female aristocrats, for instance, wielded a lot of political power in their own right. But you certainly wouldn't have seen women openly joining the army. This fits with the differences in RK Europe's dominant religion - in the Aristotelian story, three of the seven Archangels and six of the twelve Apostles are women. Were this a real history, one might wonder whether that gave rise to different social attitudes or whether they edited the story that way because of different attitudes... but whichever came first, it would certainly be hard to argue that women shouldn't be priests after that. Religion Hierarchy The class system may or not be a big deal. It's certainly become a bit of a mess. * There are the titles awarded by the Crown for services to the town or country. In England, these range from Duke down to Baron, and there are also Princes and Princesses, who are relatives of current or past monarchs. None of these titles appear in the browser game, only in RP. * There are "nobles" who've bought temporary in-game titles with tokens. They also have the temporary rank of Baronet in the RP title system, for as long as their "noble" status in the game continues. * There are also people who are commoners but have some status as town or county officials, which is much as it was in historical Europe. It's safe to say that, as in most multiplayer games, there are far more chiefs than there are Indians. Population It's a bit doubtful how many people there really are supposed to be in Renaissance Kingdoms's Europe. Some possibilities (giving the population of England for each as an example): * The same as in real life: 2-3 million people, but with most towns being less than 10,000 people each. (Taken from http://www.localhistories.org/population.html ). * Just the in-game player characters: fewer than 2,000 people in all of England and Wales, and only one town left inhabited in all Wales. This option is the most straightforward, but hardly makes sense, for any at all realistic roleplays! * Including known NPCs that people have mentioned, such as minor (blue-text) characters on the forum and NPCs listed as relatives in people's family trees, puts up the number considerably. It'd be interesting to estimate just how many that would be - perhaps someone could tot up how many NPCs have been mentioned (recently) by the inhabitants of one town, and work out the average number of NPCs per PC? * It's reasonable to pretend, if you want to, that there could be more still besides them - especially given the number of Barons, Earls and what have you with only a handful of commoners between them to be in charge of. Money Currency, of course, is all wrong - a pound was a large sum of money in the 1460s! (For comparison, a yard of woollen cloth cost 4s a yard (5 yards for £1), 14 lbs of wool 20d to 40d (12 stone a pound), a plough horse 20s or 25s, a pair of hose 4s.) Still, the game's own economy is consistent enough to be usable.